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places’, for the actors, who are little better than beggars, ‘jet under gentlemen’s noses in suits of silk, exercising themselves to prating on the stage, and common scoffing when they come abroad, where they look askance over their shoulder at every man, of whom the Sunday before they begged alms’. 8 His warnings apparently unheeded and the theatres increasingly popular, a year later he described actors ‘as the most dangerousest [sic] people in the world’, no longer merely beggars but outright thieves and corrupters of the young, noting that the acting companies were now taking on apprentices to their trade and training them up ‘to this abominable exercise’.
    There was a general acceptance that London was overpopulated and filthy, with what amounted to open sewers running down the middle of the streets, not to mention the notoriously appalling state of the River Fleet, yet killjoys like Gosson and Stockwood were far more concerned by the ‘filth’ purveyed by the theatres than the raw sewage in the streets or the carcasses of dead animals floating down the Fleet. ‘What availeth it to have sweet houses and stinking souls?’ boomed Stockwood. God, he warned, would be noting the names of those who listened to the players rather than to preachers.
    But such critics were whistling in the wind and there was one vital and missing ingredient from all that had gone before. With the ever-increasing popularity of the playhouses, the rapidly increasing professionalism of the theatre companies and the apparently insatiable demand for entertainment, there was, above all, a desperate need for plays of all kinds. Which is where the writers take centre stage, the lifestyles of many of whom would exceed the bigots’ wildest nightmares. Enter the roaring boys.

TWO
The University Wits
    . . . how many nets soever there be laid to take them, or hooks to choke them, they have ink in their bowels to darken the water; and sleights in their budgets to dry up the arm of every magistrate.
    Stephen Gosson,
School of Abuse
(1582)
    B y the time the new professional playwrights were having their first works staged, London was already becoming a considerable tourist centre for the out-of-town visitor to see and marvel at. There were the lions at the Tower of London, the great church of St Paul’s, packed with stallholders selling every kind of ware including souvenirs, the Bear Pit on the Bankside, not to mention London Bridge with its splendid shops and decaying heads on poles at its north end to give the onlooker a
frisson
of horror.
    A young hopeful born and bred in London only had to walk into one of the playhouses and offer his services to Henslowe or Burbage, or collar a sharer in one of the companies and do his best to sell himself and his idea. For those from well out of town, from Devon, Norfolk or, indeed, Warwickshire, it would have been a considerable journey, made on horseback if they had sufficient funds, otherwise on foot, possibly augmented with lifts in carriers’ carts – and without any certainty of success. Nor would they know their way around when they finally arrived and would need lodgings. Not surprisingly, in the early days these were mostly in the vicinity of The Theatre and The Curtain, in Shoreditch, Bishopsgate and Finsbury. No doubt some were soon parted from their money for the City teemed with those eager to part a fool (which is how most provincials were regarded) from his money, either by straight theft or more cunning ploys.
    However, they were quick to learn and towards the end of the 1580s a newcomer to London, bent on visiting one of the playhouses and taking refreshment in a popular tavern before the afternoon’s performance, might well find himself sitting in a corner quaffing his ale or sack watching a noisy group of young men sprawled around a table swapping jokes and anecdotes and making sure everyone present knew who they were. Indeed the author of the day’s entertainment might well be